Archives: February 2022

The Time of the Doves- Reflections

Mercè Rodoreda’s novel is definitely one that leaves you feeling some type of way, only what way you can never be sure.

After reading this narrative, I sat down and contemplated how I felt about it because my mind was blank and I couldn’t gage what I thought about it. Even now, as I write this post, I am still no closer to finding a solid answer. Maybe, in a way, it is because I feel a multitude of things for different aspects of the book that I cannot settle on just one alone. Or maybe the story just didn’t strike me. Whatever it is, my thoughts on the narrative are as follows.

Firstly, I feel sympathetic towards our protagonist, a young woman by the name Natalia, who seems to be recounting her life story and experiences in a way that is sort but also really different to Ana Maria from Bombal’s ‘Shrouded Woman.’ The fact that she finds herself trapped under the control of men from her father to her husbands, and treated as a possession, that she seems to be a character who not just highlights but in fact personifies the phrase ‘damsel in distress’ as she needs a man to protect and provide for her, the absence of a maternal presence and a father who is emotionally unavailable, all of these points garner my sympathy towards her. Perhaps if her father was more of a guiding, parental figure or had she had her mother with her growing up, Natalia might not have made the decision to end her relationship with Pere and marry Quimet and perhaps then we would have a completely different story.

She is almost forced into a corner with no way out after her marriage as Quimet asserts absolute control over the household and her, becoming jealous and controlling, something we particularly take notice of when he accuses Natalia of meeting Pere in the streets. There is a sort of helpless feeling created within the reader as we read since we see the danger in having such an unstable man controlling a woman who has no way out of her miserable fate yet all we can do is continue the story in hopes that it will not end on a terrible note. She is even stripped of her identity in a way as Quimet insists on calling her Colometa and that births a woman who is a world away from what Natalia might have been had her circumstances been different, only tightening the control her husband has over her. That Natalia is also forced to seek work as Quimet cannot reliably hold a job and has to be both the breadwinner and the homemaker of the family seemed especially cruel to me; it is as if the author decides she does not have enough to contend with and must have another burden placed on her shoulders.

Maybe I am truly saddened by the story and all its events that it prevents me from feeling any other way. Despite that, my question for this week is this; had Natalia continued her relationship with Pere, where would she have ended up at the end of the narrative?

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Bonjour Tristesse- reflections

To begin with, I found Bonjour Tristesse to be quite an intriguing, if a bit desolate, read. Sagan’s descriptions, especially when he focuses on the French upper class in the beginning of the twentieth century has an almost lyrical, romantic feel to it. What caught my interest the most the more I read of the novel was what I felt was a rather jarring contrast between the flowing prose and the more abrupt, changing experiences of Cécile as she tries to destroy her father Raymond and his lover, Anne’s relationship. As a reader, I found myself caught up in the way Cécile tends to grow from a rather spoiled and at times immature rich girl into a more conscientious young lady. The character development here is probably my favourite from the books we have read in this class so far as Cécile seems to learn that the frivolous and carefree life she leads, thanks to her father’s money and tendencies to spoil her, cannot last forever.

Sagan has woven the theme of a character coming-of-age beautifully into his portrayal of the protagonist as life slowly begins to intervene and disrupt her usual way of living, just about forcing her to take off her rose-coloured glasses and start to really see life outside of the privileged lifestyle she leads at the tender age of seventeen. What really grounds the reader’s focus is the way the author makes Cécile a character with flaws and feelings that are so relatable to what one would experience in reality and thus makes her seem like an actual person rather than simply a character built out of one’s imagination and some words. We see the truth of this especially after Raymond and Anne are married and Cécile’s darker- for the lack of a better word- side comes into play, the indulgent girl replaced by a scheming, manipulative young woman who makes what can sometimes be thought of as morally concerning decisions. It is this lack of a ‘black or white’ attitude that most authors tend to unconsciously adopt with their characters that make Cécile an intriguing character to follow along on her journey.

Almost right after, when guilt starts to worm its way in and we see Cécile experience the realisation of her actions and see the consequences as well as her responses to them, is, at least in my opinion one of the strongest highlights of the book.

My question for this week would be: what if Cécile had accepted Anne from the start? Would she have changed differently or maybe not at all?

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Agostino- Reflections

I realise this may be a somewhat unconventional way to start a blog post that is meant to be part of the course content however, my reading of Agostino was made of up of confusion and feeling unnerved.

Whenever I open a new book to read, whatever the reason may be, my first thought is to go into it completely unbiased however, with each page I turned and the more I learned of the story the further on I read, it grew exceedingly harder to keep myself from just shutting the book and walking away. The relationship between the protagonist, Agostino and his mother is complicated at best (for the lack of a better or appropriate word to describe the situation). There is a constantly expanding and contracting whirlpool of emotions within the boy with regard to the bond, I suppose one would call it, he shares with his mother and the overwhelming sense of isolation mingling with desires the reader finds it hard to make sense of. I am unsure of whether there is simply a sense of hero worship wound into Agostino’s rather glowing view of his mother or whether his love for her runs deeper than simply seeing her as an attractive woman.

Another aspect of the story that seems, at least upon the first read, to make no sense is Agostino’s mother’s lack of any sort of motherly love for her son. She frequently slaps him and leaves him for the man on the beach, completely neglecting the child that loves her so intensely.. There is also Agostino’s need to become more mature and manly which coincides with his growing discomfort around his mother which adds to the reader’s confusion as the emotions the protagonist embodies are hard to understand in context.

Thirdly, it is hard not to feel sorry for Agostino after reading about the growing hurt he experiences at the hands of the other boys, especially Berto when he first meets him. There is  a constant and growing stream of bullying and brutality that is both ruthless and deliberate and it is heartbreaking to watch Agostino forced to undergo that as well as the neglect of his mother for her ‘lover.’

My question for this week would be how, if it is possible, would one go about defining Augustino’s relationship with his mother?

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